Oracle earnings were down 7% to $1.9 billion, or 38 cents a share, but still above expectations, on revenues down 5% to $6.9 billion in the quarter ended in May.

The company blamed the stronger dollar for the dips and reassuringly says its pipeline has been growing faster than reported revenues, particularly in the last 90 days.

Without the currency impact, it reckons its net earnings per share would have been up 9% to 42 cents.

Oracle said little about Sun. The acquisition is only supposed to close this quarter.

However, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison indirectly justified the unexpected Mutt-and-Jeff purchase during the fiscal Q4 conference call Tuesday by raving about the success of Oracle's Exadata Database Machine.

He reiterated that the HP-made bundle, Oracle's first hardware venture, is "well on its way to being the most successful new product launch in Oracle's 30-year history." And it's clearly only foreplay compared to what he thinks Oracle can do when it can "really get down into the hardware" with the Sun acquisition.

Ellison claimed Exadata is trouncing its competitors, Teradata, Netezza, and IBM, and rattled off a list of customers including Apple, RIM, Amtrak and Reuters.

Anyway, in its last Sun-free quarter, Oracle's new software license revenues, a closely watched indicator, were down 13% (4% in constant currency) to $2.7 billion. Punters thought they would drop ~18% or worse.

BEA's old products contributed $201 million and applications kicked in $805 million.

Ellison said that all of Oracle's applications would be available both on-premises and on-demand. He claimed his on-demand CRM app consistently beats out Salesforce.com with large accounts. He expects Oracle's differentiator to be an on-premises cloud that Oracle runs, something Salesforce doesn't do.

Software license updates and support revenues were up 8% (or 18% in constant currency) in fiscal Q4 to $3.1 billion, a trend that's been noticeable since the recession started.

Oracle's operating income was down 3% to $2.9 billion, and its operating margin was up 100 basis points to 42%, 51% on a non-GAAP basis and a record for the company.

Oracle expects Sun to damage its pretty margins for a while, but promises "to fix that," an exercise the industry is all anxious to watch.

Oracle's GAAP operating cash flow on a trailing 12-month basis was $8.3 billion, up 12%.

Excluding items, Oracle returned 46 cents a share, better than the 44 cents Wall Street was expecting. The Street was also expecting revenues of only $6.47 billion.

The Americas region preformed the worst for Oracle.

It's claiming market share gains against SAP, its chief rival.

According to Oracle president Charles Phillips, "In Europe our applications business grew 5% in constant currency versus negative 27% growth for SAP in their most recent quarter. Historically Europe has been an SAP stronghold, but these results prove that we can compete and beat them everywhere."

Oracle seems to be having a different experience in Europe than other people, Phillips said.

At the end of May, Oracle had $12.6 billion in the bank, some of which will go to pay for Sun.

Oracle president Safra Catz described the current quarter as "tricky" and a "difficult compare."

Without Sun in the picture, she conservatively estimated that Oracle could see revenue down 3%-5% or flat to up 2% in constant currency. New software licenses could be down anywhere from 4% to 14% or flat to down 10% in constant currency. She figures EPS of 29 cents-31 cents non-GAAP or 31 cents-33 cents in constant currency.

Wall Street is thinking 30 cents non-GAAP on revenues of around $5.15 billion.

Fusion Middleware 11g is supposed to be announced next week.